Allmusic.com Reviews: Two and a Half Stars

Allmusic.com is a great encyclopedia of music. As an information resource for looking up artist and band discographies and song writing credits, I would rate them 3.5 stars out of 4. They miss half a star for not doing a good job of keeping the discographies current.

However, their album review content is not so good. For that, I would only give them 2.5 stars out of 4.

Here's a case in point. On a review of Catherine Wheel's "Happy Days", the reviewer worries that fans of the bands first two releases would be confused by and unappreciative of the harder sound of this one and gives the ablum a 2.5 star rating. The first two albums are rated 3.5 stars.

This theme, of penalizing bands for daring to change their sound and explore new territory is consistent throughout the reviews on allmusic.com. However, it's a ridiculous and lazy tactic in a music reviewer. Fans often appreciate bold changes in direction in sound from artists. Critics often review things that they themselves have no interest in. Consistently assuming that a new sound from a band will just disappoint long time fans is a just a convenient way for the reviewer to not really listen to or think about the music they are reviewing.

Also, allmusic.com is not Rolling Stone circa 197x. They are not the single editorial voice of rock music with limited print resources, this is the day and age of the internet. They shouldn't hire one self important rock critic to write two paragraphs about an album.

No, what they should do instead (and no, I'm not gonna suggest a public free-for-all like amazon.com) is to run two reviews of each album. One critical (i.e. critical as in negative) and one gushing, but hopefully well written and insightful, fan review for each release.

They should also drop the star ratings. Star ratings are insanely meaningless. If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, as I believe Elvis Costello once said, then a star rating for an album is like the response you got from friends in grade school- "I like it because it's good."

By the way, "Happy Days" is a modern rock classic by a band that felt comfortable blending the textured atmospherics of their first release with the catchy rock of their 2nd release and threw in some thinking man's heavy metal for good measure. I've yet to meet a Catherine Wheel fan who didn't love it and find it liberating and refreshing. So, stick that you up your lazy college boy wannabe critic arse, Mr. Kellman.